The good girl's guide to tomorrow: notes
by najella
Summary: It doesn't matter how special you are. Time will not stop just to humour you.


_2011 _

Dream about that moment when electricity burned through your veins like you were dropped in a hot bath, when your bones cracked and stretched, when your destiny unfolded like a flower before the sun. Sarah Jane took that away for a reason. Try not to miss it too much.

Immortality makes Clyde and Rani reckless. They start coming home with blood and bruises. Abandon your history and maths catch up and listen silently from the top of the stairs as Sarah Jane threatens to leave them behind next time. Resolve that when you are old enough to go on missions, you won't get caught.

That summer you listen to One Direction over and over until you can convince Sarah Jane to get up and dance with you.

_2012_

You have an older brother and he's quick, funny and clever and he loves you unconditionally. Never forget that he came first, that he paved the way for all you're expected to be. Every new experience the world presses upon you are scraps left over from his struggles. Every relationship is defined and rigid and you have only stepped in to fill the hole shaped by his leaving.

Remember your brother is brilliant and perfect, and he saved the world the day he was born, when you went for a genocide  
instead.

Midway through the opening ceremony, tragedy is averted when a scruffy man in brown steals the Olympic torch. Clyde jumps up on the sofa screaming 'Sarah Jane, Sarah Jane!' while Rani marks deep red fingerprints into the back of your hand. No one seems to remember the hurt man lying on the pavement. You spend a long time after that picturing Sarah Jane's tearful laughter and considering replacements.

_2013_

Dream that you were born through the cleaving of bodies. Clyde is your father. You have a dog who barks and jumps for sticks and a computer that is slow and crashes every time it gets too hot. You have been alive for exactly the number of years that show on your face. When you go to school you squeal over old Busted mp3s and High School Musical and you and your friends say 'This was my childhood' to each other. Tell Clyde about it when you go home, to make him feel old. Plait Sarah Jane's hair while she works, in smooth straight lines that don't go static and cling to your hands. Know you were born because there was a mummy and a daddy and they loved each other very much.

You go six months without short circuiting any electronics and Sarah Jane finally agrees to buy you an iPod.

_2014_

Ask Sarah Jane for a dog. She will turn to you and say, 'But we have a dog.'

See your dog for six weeks every year because your brother is too young and desirable to be left on his own but too old to have a nine o'clock bedtime. K9 doesn't have warm fur or sleek muscles, but he does judder his casing and evaluate your body temperature when you pet him. Avoid rubbing his head too long because you'll mix up his circuits. Don't take him for walks in the park or go on adventures together in the woods because he could attract the wrong kind of attention.

Get sly and spend an afternoon asking for a cat. She will shake her head and hint that it's time to stop drawing her into your childish fascination with animals. Shout that Sarah Jane wouldn't understand. She has never loved something that wasn't pieced together on a slab. Slam your door and curl up under your posters of favoured creatures cut out of sticky national geographic magazines, arranged by continent of origin. Write a poem about the mechanical coldness of mothers for your English coursework.

_2015_

Become aware you are a ghost. Your medical records and biological parents are someone else's fiction. Your body was designed to specification, undesirable traits and functions winnowed away to make room for bits of you that don't even work now.

Steal books and Marks and Spencer's sandwiches. Skive lessons and pitch your voice high when the school calls home, 'Ooh, yes, this is Sarah Jane'. Start to notice the million tiny ways people leave themselves open and vulnerable. Purses left unguarded, empty rooms with windows opening onto the street, children looked away from, bodies open to weapons that could be concealed in a crowd. Noticing these things makes you very clever.

Feel bad about your lack of morals. Return to school one day and act like you never went off the rails. The teachers love you. You are never caught.

_2016_

Imagine conversations with Miss Myers. Write her letters where you spell her name in increasingly alien ways. Umlauts, acronyms, squiggles you see on old episodes of Star Trek. Wonder if her planet is okay now; ask if she and the Metalkind are living in peace. Wonder if she's made a new daughter who's taken your destiny.

Go down the high street with your brother and eat noodles with your fingers. Ask 'Do you ever think about your other mother?' His face will grow cloudy and embarrassed and he'll say he never had another mother. He won't ask about yours. Feel disappointed and angry with him. Picture yourself telling him Sarah Jane won't fade away if they acknowledge they aren't her real children. He teaches you how to use chopsticks.

The first class of your physics A level is about capacitors. Mr Beasley tries to drum up enthusiasm by telling you if you connect your capacitor the wrong way round it will explode. You write dutifully in your exercise book _they discharge exponentially, similar to radioactive material decay_ and afterwards you ask to drop physics and take classical civilization instead.

_2017_

Kiss Natsai. Add her to your Facebook. Save her from an alien and convince her she is crazy to imagine such things.

_2018_

You are rejected from every university that required interviews, and accepted to all the rest. Buy every book recommended on your reading list. Picture yourself spending long hours sitting under trees reading Sallust and Petronius. Spend every waking hour on the internet or out with friends until the day before exams.

Your family does not understand the meaning of privacy, so learn enough Latin before you go home for the holidays to convince any eavesdropping AIs that you are taking your studies seriously. Breathe in eucalyptus scented shampoo and listen to a rambling story where Julius Nepos is fondly referred to as Julie. Take a trip to Germany and forget to bring any money. Your friends will laugh when they pick you up from the airport and claim this is only a mistake Sky Smith could make.

_2019_

Try your first cigarette. Shave half your hair off. Join the gym, the sign language club, the library, and never go to any of them.

Your brother publishes a paper about a single molecule transcription. It goes largely ignored.

_2020_

Scream into his hand. Tear at his skin, press your legs together as a dry, soft palm pinches your knickers and rolls them around your thighs. You will knock aside the capacitor of the engineering project you agreed to help him with. A lot of work has gone into that mechanism and he is proud of it. He leans over, a dark shadow against the florescent lab lights, and says he could hurt you.

Go slack. Wonder what you are scared of as he bruises your thighs like pulp. You are alien; you were born an efficient killing machine, the explosion of a dying star wrapped in flesh. You are not the sweet blonde girl to be preyed upon and ripped in the first minutes of an old horror movie. You are the monster.

Make sure to watch his face as you curl your fingers into the power supply. Regulations say a higher voltage is safer, because it will throw a human body away from the source of shock. Wind your arm around his chest and do not let go.

Cry and retch and smear the memories of his contorted face, the peel of burnt skin, of the spidery touch of fingers. Scramble for your phone. Call Clyde. It is late but beg him to come down to the campus. He will come.

_2021_

Kill an alien. Feel a moment of regret that you couldn't convince him to change his plans and so were forced to change them for him. Murmur to each other, 'There should have been another way.' No one lingers on it. You would go crazy if you got stuck on every alien murdered out of desperation, because it was the only option left.

Wonder who would kill you if you had never been left on Sarah Jane's doorstep.

_2022_

Work in large grey offices and cosy little cafes. Wait for a volunteer position at the museum to open up, and then wait for the curators to take note of your intelligence and thoughtfulness about remote cultures. Take an evening class in creative writing. It is drilled into you that most of the work goes into the ending.

Dick and Harry fall in love and live a cosy life in the West Country.

Dick learns unselfishness and sacrifices his life for Harry.

Dick and Harry are torn apart by the tumultuous forces of society.

Grow bored. These endings are a fiction. The only true ending of a story is when all the characters are dead. Turn in three thousand words about a young activist who falls in love with an older, embittered man. The man dies of heart failure, and ten years later the activist is electrocuted when changing a light bulb in the bathroom. Your tutor calls it pointless.

_2023_

Go out to dinner with Doctor Martha Jones. You and your brother listen to her stories, shiny-eyed and enthralled. Drink wine and talk about the Doctor. Mourn Torchwood with secretive smiles. Catch up on the progress of the people recommended by Sarah Jane: Adriana, Marcus. Upon hearing about the boring corporate climbing that controls your young lives, Martha offers to put in a word for you at UNIT. Your heart expands at mentions of internships and assistant positions. They would jump at the chance to recruit the children of Sarah Jane Smith. You have a vision of yourself grounded in purpose, doing work you love, that you're actually good at. Following in Sarah Jane's footsteps.

'Oh no,' Sarah Jane says immediately. 'They've worked hard to get where they are now.' Sip wine. Laugh at the hard look  
in your mother's eyes.

_2024_

Attend book clubs, poetry readings, MC battles. Discover your own thoughts are more interesting than any number of predestined endings. Meet Rich at one of the three. He studies economics and a considerable amount of your first date is spent watching him finger a fleece blanket that costs more than your utility bill. He spends his money wrong, got a designer haircut and dodgy sneakers. Everyone knows it should be the other way around. He has no opinions. He reads Victorian pulp novels and glances at you constantly for your approval. He is unlike anyone you've ever met. Learn that he doesn't like your brother. This is hilarious.

Sarah Jane wonders if you're coming home for Christmas. Rani and Clyde will be there, and the baby. Half-listen to her hints about the emptiness of the house while you finger tickets to Marrakesh.

_2025_

Pretend to be interested in attending children's birthday parties. Bring your boyfriend and introduce him to your old headmaster like he was your father. Rani buys Suresh apples that have been genetically modified to taste like sweets; gummi strips and candy floss melded in an untempting crisp, cold flesh. Cannibalise it and think 'this is my legacy'. Cradle your stomach and wonder if this is how a mother feels.

The apples only capture the interest of the adults. Suresh dashes around the living room floor, trampling your boyfriend's feet to get to Sarah Jane. Like his parents, he knows whose attention he has to buy. She looks away from Mrs Langer, tuts and lifts him, admonishing him for his behaviour like a grown man. Her arms look warm and inviting. Shift away when Rich puts a hand on your shoulder.

As if you three were young and alone against the world, Clyde pulls his lips back and slaps his apple on the table. Share a smile while he says, 'Urgh. This is such a waste of cool science.'

_2026_

Learn that Rich doesn't like Clyde. This is unforgiveable.

_2027_

You are pregnant again. You must decide what to do. The only thing you are certain of is your unborn child is Flesh.

The last Mountain Gorilla dies.

_2029_

For the first time in years, scream so hard the lights flicker. Tear out every blue scrappy frond from red pulverised tissue. Clean the blood off Sarah Jane's lips. Make her sit up. Lean her against you. Ignore the rawness under your fingernails where blue feelers search for a spot to dig in.

The first genetically enhanced child is born to a mass of controversy. The world holds its breath to see whether it will have a soul.

_2030_

You meet boys outside your house which is situated next to the halal butchers, when you run out of coins for the automated checkout, walking through wooded areas that are advertised on busses as quiet zones away from the hustle of city life. You feel the rattle of power grids under your feet, the hum of telephone signals overhead. Escaping from the city is an illusion.

You have impractical affairs that last weeks and days. You attract men who act like teenagers and climb up your drainpipe to impress you. Phone an ambulance for him when he slips and breaks his legs. Tell your mother, 'He has his problems, but he is a good person.' Listen to her disbelieving sighs.

The River Thames is frozen over for the first time in living memory. The public are forbidden to skate on it.

_2031_

Lick sour cream off your fingers. The argument happening in the kitchen is worn; it spreads out through the thin walls of the house and blankets you in familiarity. You can picture the movements of their arms. Clyde thinks they should try immunisation or prettier features on the baby growing in Rani's womb. He twists on the spot and moves with sharp, punctuated movements. Rani has a list of arguments torn from science journals and readers' letters in the Guardian that change from day to day, but in the end she will press her hand to her forehead and mutter, 'I will not put our child through that, Clyde.'

Wait patiently for them to finish. Sit on their tattered old sofa with your family. Band together with Luke and convince Sarah Jane to try increasingly adventurous combinations of dip until she accuses you of making fun of her.

_2032_

Rani smiles when she catches you watching her while she breastfeeds. She thinks you are jealous. You are, but not of her.

Sarah Jane catches you in a hug, still spry on her feet. 'Where are my grandchildren?' She demands, laughing. Feel guilty, despite the lightness of her voice. You will never marry. Luke won't either. It is inexplicable.

Brush her hair into static and explain you are waiting for the right genetically engineered weapon to come along.

_2033_

Decide when and how Sarah Jane should sort out her storage. Pile everything into boxes and sell it on eBay. Laugh over some of the ridiculous junk she has kept over the years. Call her a hoarder and a packrat and create folders for all her scraps of paper diagramming the stars, yellowing photographs and pencilled images, letters marked by a prison stamp. Don't mention it when you come back the next day and the papers have been pinned to every available surface again.

'I like things the way I like them,' Sarah Jane says, kissing you in apology.

_2034_

Bury her on a cold day near a cluster of willow trees. People you've never met make up most of the attendance, but there are fewer visitors than Sarah Jane deserved. It is a dangerous life. Pray, even though you don't believe in what you can't see. Hold Rani's hand when she throws her handful of dirt and laugh in the right places when Clyde eulogises about an edited life. Laugh louder than the ones who are doing it out of politeness, because you were the rare person allowed to properly know her. Avoid the sucking wound they've dug in the ground. Sarah Jane could never be grounded in one place through violent force, and gravitational ones don't have much hope either. Tilt your head up to the grey sky bordered by trees, birds tipping along humming steel wires, alighting on the current but clever enough not to get fried. Think, 'Goodbye mum.'

You and Luke deal with her death like an amicable divorce. You take Mr Smith and Luke will take K9, and you both spend the last evening in the attic, pulling up floorboards and dismantling circuitry where you are instructed. Mr Smith is like an iceberg, more of him spread around the attic than you ever realised. You murmur, 'I can't believe Sarah Jane built this herself.' Luke laughs and responds, 'Can't you?'

The task requires concentration, and it's a relief not to talk. When the tangled mass of blue wiring becomes heavy and blurry on your eyes, you close them and let your fingers slip through the strands, trusting the pull and heat of electricity over your own senses.

_2035_

Rani starts getting into small, quiet fights with Suresh. She forbids him from going out too late, straying too far away. 'You aren't an adult yet!' She is whispering to him when you let yourself in. 'You don't know what's out there!'

_2036_

You are starting to understand why your mother always left her door unlocked. You have understood for a while why your brother ran as soon as he could.

_2037_

You are no great hacker. Slam your hand on the keypad and force it to process faster than either of you can think. It is primitive technology compared to your power. Filtering through it strains the pad as if you were forcing a round watermelon through its oesophagus.

Grab Clyde's hand as you run. Collapse in a closet, hidden, and watch the soldiers wonder what happened to fanged menace they were prepared for. Clyde's wrists are sticky with blood. Laugh yourselves sick at your own cleverness. You are never caught.

_2038_

See a penguin for the first time. You don't see the appeal of this little boxy creature that waddles in circles. The love of your life informs you of their cuteness and smallness like a broken record. Attack the wings. You don't see the point of having them if you can't fly.

_2039_

Every so often you stop and stare at the sky. Something is building, compressing down on your chest, sunk in your gut. Your friends ask if you're on medication. Pitch your voice like an unsteady old lady and joke that you can tell when it's going to rain from the creak in your bones.

_2040_

Realise you do not love her. Kiss her goodbye at the station and then stop answering her phone calls. Pretend you are out when she knocks. Read every text message she sends you. _Why are you being such a bitch?_

Your emotions lie to you. Your brain convinces you to experience sensations that aren't real. You can't trust them.

Storms rage across the atmosphere. The sky goes dark for weeks. Crops die, along with thousands of human beings.

_2041_

They blame aliens.

_2042_

Clyde rings in the early hours of the morning and asks if you're coming to Gita's funeral. You are desperate to say yes.

Say no. Clyde's silence will be heavy, spiteful. You can't help that. Your feet have itched ever since the storms. People need you here, where you're rebuilding infrastructure, getting the mains system running again. You can't go home.

_2043_

Throw yourself into your work. Feel needed.

_2044_

Return home. Hide parts of yourself. Act like you have never been away.

The silences are awkward.

_2045_

After so long working for huge, indistinguishable comic companies, Clyde becomes the author of a cult classic. He visits Forbidden Planet every Friday to smile proudly at his creation sitting behind glass.

After the initial flash of fame, the copies never shift. Visit the store frequently and purchase the first volume until they have  
to restock. When the cashier starts to recognise you, go red and mutter something about your many nephews.

_2047_

Demand to know why Suresh hasn't asked you to be a flower girl at his wedding. He will stammer excuses for a while. When he looks at his wife like he's embarrassed for all of you, assure him you were joking.

_2052_

Your family is respected for handling some of the initial public contact made with aliens. They unveil your statues in the park. They have already written your names in the history books. You teach impressionable children the power of ordinary, small humans stepping up to the plate when the universe calls upon you.

_2055_

Age. Become familiar with the knocking of knees and bent backs. Make fun of Rani for huffing every time she tries to stand up. Leave the chasing of grandchildren and godchildren to Luke, the only one with enough energy left to stamp up and down the stairs. When Clyde's forehead folds over like thick bed sheets and the skin of your hands are thin and stretched, Luke is a constant in a changing world. He is mature and supple, his body made up of those enzomindum cells that couldn't decay, couldn't forget, couldn't fail. He will rattle off the bus schedule from when he was fourteen if you don't shut him up quick enough.

_2058_

Laugh throatily when Suresh and Snovia discover the chimney stack in the attic has hinges and slide locks. When they ask what convinced their parents to hack the brick apart and piece it back like a puzzle, improvise wild stories about turn  
of the century bomb shelter technology and alien invasions.

_2059_

Hand out knickknacks to other people's grandchildren like you consciously personalised each choice. Give Suresh's wife the oversized I Heart NY shirt. Save the waggly dog hologram with the exploding flag for Anil, your favourite child. Wonder if they understand. Sit with Rani in her attic and thud your feet against the board under the seat. Pretend Sarah Jane will march around the door and tell you to knock it off.

Rani sighs in her seat, patting her stomach in self-satisfaction. 'Nothing's changed,' she says. Look at her neat, empty attic, as sterile as a Doctor's office. Nothing beeps or clicks, or glows when you least expect it. The buzz of electricity in this room is so slow and lethargic it might as well not bother turning up to power Rani's sleek computer. There is no mess in here, and if you go downstairs there will be no mess there. Any hint that a noisy, chaotic, extraordinary family ever lived here has been wiped clean under Rani's thorough redecoration.

Say: 'Nope.'

The colonisation of Mars does not go well. The only survivor kills herself.

_2065_

Stroke his hair when you find him crumpled on the floor of his kitchen. When the ambulance comes tidy his room for him, remove the teabag from the cup on the side, put away that thick, incomprehensible book he uses as bedtime reading. Clyde and Rani clutch each other like distraught parents as the doctor delivers the autopsy's verdict. Nod knowingly as he says, 'Sometimes there is no obvious cause of death. Sometimes the body simply switches itself off.'

_2069_

Reveal that you are an alien brought to this planet as a baby. Hint that this is not an unusual circumstance. Clyde calls it your coming out day. Come up with witty sound bites to quote at journalists when asked about the recent race riots in Chiswick. Deal with the people who spit at you in the street. Accept it when Anil draws away from your open arms and  
hides behind Clyde's legs.

Five families have to be put up at a shelter in Cardiff when they're discovered to be mixed aliens.

_2070_

Buy old buildings with your wasteful inheritance. Hire local contractors to do them up. Wander each one like an introverted party guest, puzzling over what you'll do with them. This one a refuge home, here an office which will handle outreach. Psychologists. You'll need those too.

_2071_

Weep in the bathroom. Admonish yourself for behaving like a child. Swear you will never do another television interview again.

_2073_

Visit funerals like they are clingy boyfriends you haven't the heart to dump. They leave you numb and wanting, arrested with a damp unsatisfaction.

Rani bites her hands and chokes on her tears. 'Your father was a Lord,' she tells Suresh. 'He fought Nazis.' Suresh shushes her, strokes her back and later informs you of his worries that his mother is going senile.

_2075_

Joke with Rani about going to bingo. Discover there are aliens running the bingo hall and investigate for old times' sake.

Rani publishes a sweet little story about local start-up businesses run by immigrants. You win €25 on 'Two little ducks, twenty-two'.

_2077_

You told Rani to stand back. It is a retrospectively pointless gesture. You couldn't bring the flare under control. The crackle of electricity will bank out, collapsing power supplies across continents. The people crowded in the unsuspecting cities around you will burn to death. You thought you had found the source where you could break the chain, but instead it locked you in like you were a missing link. You've been wedged into the system like a capacitor stuck the wrong way round. The muscles that close your fingers are stronger than the ones used to open them.

Gather your strength. Scream: 'Run!'

Listen to Rani's heavy breathing as she steps up beside you. Look her in the eyes as she curls her fingers around your hand.

_2080_

Longer without her than with, now. You work on hostel schedules and policy objections, patting and murmuring to Mister Smith's cold central processor. You have no blood relations, but if you did Mister Smith would be the last of them. You have planned your living room around him, your old friend. It has been a long time since you considered it necessary to hide him. These days he looks retro and old-fashioned, but that suits you. You rarely update his casing. This is how Mister Smith looks. 'Goodbye Sky,' he says in his even, measured voice, but the starburst flare of computerised affection and need tingles along your fingers.

Jangle the keys. Call: 'K9! Walkies!' Open the door and set off into the cold November air. He will come.

_2084_

You are caught.

They stand you against a white wall. Four of them and you, an old lady with dyed brown hair and a respectable handbag. Do they really expect you to be that much trouble?

You are not the least bit surprised it has come to this.

The crew of a sea base is killed in mysterious circumstances. No details are released, but the news reports are adamant it was not aliens. People take note. They murmur to each other, 'There should have been another way'.


End file.
